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Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has confirmed three Australians have been hurt when a van mowed people down in a popular tourist spot, killing more than a dozen people and injuring around one hundred more.

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Former foreign minister Bob Carr, polymath as he is, probably knows that. Mr Carr would no doubt also know that steel-cut oats have a lower position on the glycemic index than rolled oats.

He'd know that his taut, toned, finely tuned body was digesting his organic steel-cut-oat breakfast more slowly than if he'd eaten a bowl of sloppy rolled oats, keeping his blood sugar levels on a tighter leash.

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In his new book, Diary of a Foreign Minister, Carr helpfully divulges details of his fitness regime (including the one-leg Romanian deadlift) and his dietary preferences. Organic steel-cut oats, he says, are an essential part of the perfect breakfast.

This is not the territory of Uncle Tobys. This is the earnest territory of health-food stores and fanatics.

Fitness fanatic: Then state opposition leader Bob Carr takes part in Body Control exercises with Bruce Gyngell. Photo: Robert Pearce

An Australian online forum for body-builders has a thread on steel-cut oats. “I grind steel-cut oats up in the coffee grinder and mix them with milk, protein and some flavour,” says one. “I'm off to have another oats shake!”

She explains that “steel-cut” oats are oats that have been husked, leaving the oat kernel, or groat, and its outside bran layer. They're then steamed and sliced by blade into smaller pieces that resemble the chewy bulgur wheat of tabouli.

A rolled oat on the other hand, is a groat that's been rolled and flattened; an emasculated groat if you like. A rolled oat has all the macro and micronutrients of a steel-cut oat, the same protein, carbohydrate, fibre, fat, calcium and iron. It's low on the glycemic index too. But a rolled oat has none of the oomph, none of the heroics of a steel-cut oat.

There's a touch of the Dorian Gray in Mr Carr's long-documented quest for the elixir of life and a concave abdomen defined by deep-cut obliques.

As Premier, he was known to jog up to 30 flights of stairs to his office. He passed on bread and dessert. Snacks were protein-rich indulgences such as egg white omelettes or bowls of sardines. His biography, The Reluctant Leader, recounted cancer screening tests and colonoscopies.

In a 1992 diary entry published in the book he wrote: “I'm 44. This is a race against the biological clock.” In 1997, he told a newspaper: “I'm sort of mentally fixed at the age of 35.” In 1997, he returned from a trip to Germany to tut-tut about the rotundity of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. “His staple meal is apparently a range of boiled meats cooked in pig's stomach.”

Mr Carr is also a dedicated multi-tasker. He sometimes practices his German with Mr Behn, who lists motivational speaking, hypnotherapy, nutrition, fitness and lifestyle coaching among his skills.

“He's a very healthy man, he's looking after his diet; he's trying to eat organics as much as possible, no alcohol,” says Mr Behn.

The thing is, you want steel-cut oats in the belly of the foreign minister. Perhaps it should be legislated, for ministers inner and outer, for parliamentary secretaries even; the oath of office to include a breakfast clause: steel-cut oats must be consumed on a daily basis.